2019 Global Health Security Index: Countries Ranked by Preparedness for Pandemic(ghsindex.org)
ghsindex.org
2019 Global Health Security Index: Countries Ranked by Preparedness for Pandemic
https://www.ghsindex.org/
25 comments
Human action is the key. The US was very well prepared, but when the federal government and many state governments weren't interested in stopping the virus of course being prepared doesn't help.
Same with the UK: the response from their scientific community has been absolutely fantastic. But when Boris Johnson simply didn't want to lock down and couldn't make up his mind until too late that didn't count for much. Also he fucked up the test-trace-isolate system for ideological reasons.
Sweden + Denmark were rated as more prepared than Norway, which could well be true, but Sweden chose the UK approach (for no sane reason) and has paid the price.
In all of these cases the problem is not lack of ability to handle the pandemic, but a political lack of will to do it.
Same with the UK: the response from their scientific community has been absolutely fantastic. But when Boris Johnson simply didn't want to lock down and couldn't make up his mind until too late that didn't count for much. Also he fucked up the test-trace-isolate system for ideological reasons.
Sweden + Denmark were rated as more prepared than Norway, which could well be true, but Sweden chose the UK approach (for no sane reason) and has paid the price.
In all of these cases the problem is not lack of ability to handle the pandemic, but a political lack of will to do it.
All policies being equal, I can see this accurate. What it does not (and realistically cannot) include is the willingness of the population to do anything about the pandemic. Western health systems probably held up better under similar caseloads. Western delivery of vaccines was probably close to the top. Certainly won on vaccine production and logistics and research.
The death tolls in the USA and to a lesser extent Canada, the UK, Italy, and Spain were an unwillingness on the part of some of the population to act on the pandemic. They wouldn't social distance. They wouldn't put on masks. They wouldn't stop travelling. And the governments were unwilling or unable to force them to do so.
The death tolls in the USA and to a lesser extent Canada, the UK, Italy, and Spain were an unwillingness on the part of some of the population to act on the pandemic. They wouldn't social distance. They wouldn't put on masks. They wouldn't stop travelling. And the governments were unwilling or unable to force them to do so.
China let the virus explode, reported 5000 deaths. Anyone believes China is prepared is a fool.
What the hell kind of bullshit is this? Everyone knows they did not let it explode and had things under control until the last few weeks. Compared to most of the world China has seen almost no covid. That's what the official numbers say and it's been borne out by independent western journalists over and over again.
It’s out of date at this point, but I plotted the Global Health Security Index against covid death rates back in November if you’d like to get a sense of the relationship: https://twitter.com/kforeman/status/1331035362676785152
The problem with this is that you simply cannot compare the covid death statistics coming out of a country in Africa with those reported by USA or Germany.
Even in India, where we do have excellent reporting in some states and cities, the vast majority of covid deaths are expected to go unreported or undetected.
I think a more valid chart would be to plot only countries with comparable per capita GDP, and comparable health indicators (life expectancy, infant mortality, etc.). That would confirm the implication that USA's GHSI rank of 1 was inaccurate.
Even in India, where we do have excellent reporting in some states and cities, the vast majority of covid deaths are expected to go unreported or undetected.
I think a more valid chart would be to plot only countries with comparable per capita GDP, and comparable health indicators (life expectancy, infant mortality, etc.). That would confirm the implication that USA's GHSI rank of 1 was inaccurate.
This is somewhat hilarious. They ranked the U.S. #1 and we promptly had ~650,000 COVID-19 deaths (so far). China ranks #51 and has less than 5,000 deaths.
I’m still completely baffled as to how China handled the pandemic.
On the one hand, I entirely believe that their state has the reach and support to quarantine entire regions and crush the pandemic by force.
On the other hand, nominally Marxist countries with massive bureaucracies and being honest about death tolls go together like shit and strawberry shortcake.
I’m still probably erring on the side of China getting it right though. The Soviets barely managed to cover up Chernobyl for a few days and this is a much more visible event.
On the one hand, I entirely believe that their state has the reach and support to quarantine entire regions and crush the pandemic by force.
On the other hand, nominally Marxist countries with massive bureaucracies and being honest about death tolls go together like shit and strawberry shortcake.
I’m still probably erring on the side of China getting it right though. The Soviets barely managed to cover up Chernobyl for a few days and this is a much more visible event.
Chernobyl was a technical problem. Public health is a political problem. Authoritarian states are much better at handling political problems.
The uncertainty at the beginning likely helped them. At the beginning it was thought of being another SARS there while later in the west it was downplayed with the narrative of it being “like the flu”.
Death tolls in China were covered up according to citizen media. There were reports of crematoriums running at full capacity in Wuhan in January 2020. It’s hard for people to die of covid if they haven’t even been tested.
Before Wuhan locked down and covid tests became a thing face masks became mandatory in public. Police would arrest people who refused to wear a mask. They were temperature checking people in their homes and in public and quarantining them in camps too. They didn’t have an issue with PPE because they soaked up supplies even going so far as to request citizens in other countries to buy up local supply.
While all their efforts have appeared to be effective their vaccine hasn’t been shown to be as effective as the alternatives so there is still a chance for things to go wrong though.
Death tolls in China were covered up according to citizen media. There were reports of crematoriums running at full capacity in Wuhan in January 2020. It’s hard for people to die of covid if they haven’t even been tested.
Before Wuhan locked down and covid tests became a thing face masks became mandatory in public. Police would arrest people who refused to wear a mask. They were temperature checking people in their homes and in public and quarantining them in camps too. They didn’t have an issue with PPE because they soaked up supplies even going so far as to request citizens in other countries to buy up local supply.
While all their efforts have appeared to be effective their vaccine hasn’t been shown to be as effective as the alternatives so there is still a chance for things to go wrong though.
What is baffling about it? There's huge numbers of reports in western media about the extremely severe lockdown in Wuhan. In addition they did testing and tracing to a quite frankly unbelievable extent.
They had both the will and the ability. The west only had the ability unless you want to count Australia and NZ.
They weren't honest about the death toll, and came close to fucking things up because of that, but once Beijing decided to be serious about stopping it they did stop it.
We know from outside reporting that they handled it, so there's nothing to guess about there.
They had both the will and the ability. The west only had the ability unless you want to count Australia and NZ.
They weren't honest about the death toll, and came close to fucking things up because of that, but once Beijing decided to be serious about stopping it they did stop it.
We know from outside reporting that they handled it, so there's nothing to guess about there.
I dont believe the China numbers.
But they did go full authoritarian on their own people... I remember reading in the very early days there were accounts of the state police WELDING people into their apartments in Wuhan to stop them going out for food etc.
Scary stuff. I wonder how those people feel about those actions now, over a year later and 600k+ deaths in the US.
But they did go full authoritarian on their own people... I remember reading in the very early days there were accounts of the state police WELDING people into their apartments in Wuhan to stop them going out for food etc.
Scary stuff. I wonder how those people feel about those actions now, over a year later and 600k+ deaths in the US.
How did food get into the places that were welded shut?
https://www.google.com/search?q=china+food+delivery+quaranti...
(food delivery through openings)
(food delivery through openings)
yeah I don't know.
I did see some site unrelated reports that the gov were organizing deliveries. I would hope they were not letting those that they felt the need to "jail" in their own homes, starve to death...
I did see some site unrelated reports that the gov were organizing deliveries. I would hope they were not letting those that they felt the need to "jail" in their own homes, starve to death...
Three minute read about low tech quarantine management in Beijing in May 2020. I had hoped to collect many more, but failed: http://agk.sdf.org/lib/lrm/lrp20beijing.html
Iirc the welding was of secondary entrances, forcing all buildings to have a single entrance for easier monitoring. Still extreme, but not quite what was reported.
Accounts? There's plenty of videos from Chinese people receiving food deliveries in apartments with bigass levers welded to the door that only allowed it to open about five inches.
Given that it worked is it really that bad?
Yes, it is really bad. A government welding people into their homes is bad, no matter the situation. I am surprised there are people in the civilised world for whom this is not obvious.
Almost like China might not be the most forth coming with their numbers?
I mean Laos seemed to be doing really well last year but they weren’t testing much so not many cases! Success!
I mean Laos seemed to be doing really well last year but they weren’t testing much so not many cases! Success!
What the US did is nothing short of amazing. They lead the early race on the science and continued to lead .
China is complex. We underestimated their totalitarianism but they also had solid science which we ignored, reporters on CNN were happy to contradict China's head of health. China got the genome online when the death toll was one. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN908947.1 That seems fast to me.
The report is missing the media. They seem to have been the most destructive force during the pandemic.
Only recently Europe has overtaken the USA on vaccines uptake -
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
China is complex. We underestimated their totalitarianism but they also had solid science which we ignored, reporters on CNN were happy to contradict China's head of health. China got the genome online when the death toll was one. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN908947.1 That seems fast to me.
The report is missing the media. They seem to have been the most destructive force during the pandemic.
Only recently Europe has overtaken the USA on vaccines uptake -
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
But would you attribute the 650,000 American deaths to something in the index or merely political/population decisions?
All the vaccines in the world are useless if the people won't take them. Stockpiles of masks are useless if people won't use them.
All the vaccines in the world are useless if the people won't take them. Stockpiles of masks are useless if people won't use them.
wow.. Australia ranks 4th.
be interesting to run the numbers again given the last year and a half...
be interesting to run the numbers again given the last year and a half...
This ranking was made a year before an actual pandemic and they had more misses than hits, and understanding why may help with other predictions about the future. At least the ones involving human actions.